Problems with Central Governance

Centralised governance has seldom led to changes in the behaviour of individuals and communities toward more sustainable resource use and development. Problems have been identified by various writers in various literatures thus I found such are quite thorough.  Problems identified are as follows:

  1. Over-simplistic solutions and linear cause-and-effect assumptions that fail to deal with the uncertainty, complexity, and multi-dimensionality of the problems,
  2. Fail to address the distribution of costs and benefits of policy impacts,
  3. Frequent flawed policy responses that de-emphasise the consideration of affected interests in favour of “objective” analyses and suffer from a lack of popular acceptance,
  4. An almost exclusive reliance on systematic observations and general theories that tends to ignore the local and anecdotal knowledge of the people most familiar with the problem and risk producing outcomes that are socially and economically unworkable
  5. Uncoordinated, comparmentalised or sectorally-based implementation of policy, programs and planning initiatives
  6. The lack of appropriate institutional arrangements to facilitate participation that is inclusive of all interests in the community
  7. The weaknesses of the strategies adopted to resolve conflict; and
  8. The failure to move beyond the development of management plans to on-ground implementation (extracts from Bellamy and Robinson 2000)

Above ideas further confirm my point of views towards the inadequacies of Functional Model in pushing better environmental agendas.  Yet a functional model is necessary to maintain the stability and harmony of a society.  Otherwise, if a society is full of social unrest, the future of environmental improvement is not optimistic either.  Therefore, a complementary use of the Functional Model and the Conflict Model will be more ideal.